This invention relates in part to packaging machinery, and more particularly to packaging machines for food processing, such as stuffing machines of the type which make sausage chubs and similar stuffed meat and stuffed food products. Most particularly, this invention relates to an improved clipping mechanism in and for a chub forming machine.
Sausage making and the making of similar stuffed meat and food products has become highly automated. As a result of significant, valuable research in the United States, a variety of machines have been successfully developed for the automated and semi-automated production of chubs from processed meats and casing. One such machine is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,766,713, issued on Aug. 30, 1988 to Alfred J. Evans, for a Packaging Device Including Dual Clip Attachment Apparatus, incorporated by reference. In a machine such as that disclosed in the identified patent, sausage material is pumped from a vat to a stuffing horn assembly. Shirred casing is applied over the end of a stuffing horn. The casing and material pumped to the horn leave the horn simultaneously, through a casing brake. The stuffing material fills the casing and the casing maintains the material under slight pressure. The casing brake permits the casing to exit under uniform tension. Adjacent the casing brake, dual product clippers intermittently act to void sections of the casing which have passed the brake, into voided "rope" sections. The clippers clip each rope section to define the end of an exiting chub and the beginning of the next chub.
Other notable machines are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,675,945 issued on Jun. 30, 1987 to Alfred Evans et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,847,953 issued on Jul. 18, 1989 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,887,332 issued on Dec. 19, 1989, all incorporated by reference. In the machines of the identified patents, clipping mechanisms are provided for supplying and deforming metal clips about the voided casing.
While the machines of U.S. Pat. No. 4,766,713 and the other identified patents have proven highly desirable, continued advances have been desired in clipping mechanisms, to decrease the size of the mechanisms, reduce the number of parts of the mechanisms, simplify adjustments of the mechanisms, reduce the air volume and pressure requirements of the mechanisms, extend the life of the mechanisms, and package the mechanisms into self-contained units.